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The Never Enough

My at-home indoor workout the other day was interrupted after 20 minutes when my toddler woke from his 25-minute-long nap (if you can call it that), and I dragged him out of his crib, careful to engage my pelvic floor that has been destroyed thanks to my getting the “You should do pelvic floor physical therapy as soon as you have a baby” message only after having my second child. I tucked my third baby into my side on top of my bed so that maybe, just maybe, I could get him back to sleep quickly enough to get back to that workout that I budgeted exactly 30 minutes in my day to do. As I tried to nurse him (yes, I still nurse him, partly out of he’s-so-cute-and-he’s-my-last-baby and partly out of how-the-hell-else-will-I-get-him-to-relax but also partly I-give-him-vaccine-antibodies) I had the thought, “Why is this not enough? Why do I feel like everything I do is not enough?”

I was sweating and nursing and budgeting and re-budgeting time and determining what, if any, housework will get done, and what, if any, Other Work — like writing, or engaging with clients, or sending out invoices — will get done before I had to go get the big kids from school and embark on the evening to-dos. All while trying to relax so the toddler would relax so I could stop relaxing and finish my workout.

So why is everything I do not enough?

Maybe it’s because I bury myself in impossibilities and ambitions.

Impossibilities include:

    Clean the house every day.
    I mean, clean one room every day.
    Meditate.
    Don’t scream.
    Go to the bathroom alone.
    Exercise every single day so that I don’t scream every single day.
    Write every single day.
    Practice/make music every single day.
    Sleep some.
    Build the business.
    Be better at everything I do.
    Do more of everything I do.

Ambitions are:

    All of the above, plus grace.

Or maybe it’s because I’m a lady who has lady problems and who has been to lady doctors who simply tell me they don’t know why I’m having lady problems and that I should just attribute it to stress and to take some Excedrin. If I weren’t a lady, these problems wouldn’t be a mystery; dudes would be all over them and have done multitudes of research on this and I wouldn’t be left alone out here to struggle along all by my-lady-self.

Or maybe it’s all not enough because I’m under the impression that I’m supposed to be doing all of this and be happy at the same time. What does “enough” even mean? If I do enough of this or enough of that I’ll have arrived? At what? What is the goal here?

I think the best approach is to understand that this is simply how it is. This is how things are. These are the conditions in which I’m living at this moment. How I feel about these conditions — the qualities I attribute to them — are completely separate from the fact that the conditions exist.

I will continue to do all the things I do because it is what I’m supposed to do. I have an almost-two-year-old who will follow me into every bathroom I enter. How I feel about this is irrelevant and will not change the fact that he will do this. We are entering into the cold, dark six months of winter here in Minneapolis. How I feel about this is irrelevant. We are approaching the holidays that are forever altered for my family and this is simply how it is for us.

So why is it that I feel like what I do, and don’t do, for that matter, is not enough? Because it isn’t enough. It will never be enough because I don’t know what enough even is.

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Parenting As Ambition

I have a second grader, a kindergartner and a maniac who is about to turn two. My daughter asked me a couple of days ago if I always wanted to have three kids. I told her I did. She said, “Well congratulations. You got three kids.”

I’ve been thinking about this. I heard a woman introduce herself by listing her ambitions. She included “motherhood” as one of them.

I never, ever considered motherhood this way. And yet my daughter is wrong. I didn’t get three kids. I did not struggle very much with fertility issues or pregnancy complications, though I did have a miscarriage. However, my husband and I did plan to have a child. And then another, and then even following the lost pregnancy, we planned to have yet another. We made three people. People!

So why did I not think of having children as ambitious?

In the lead up to Halloween, I saw a lot of memes depicting moms yelling after their costumed kids. Say thank you! Did you say thank you? Wear a monster costume, don’t be a monster in costume.

Why is it, in these eight years I’ve experienced parenthood, that I have not thought about how daunting this task is? Did I minimize its enormity because there are so many women out there in the world who do it? Because people can be totally unprepared and unwilling, and turn into parents anyway?

Why is parenting not the most highly regarded occupation there is? It is most definitely an occupation. But not only do you not get paid to be a parent, it takes more money and much more energy than you actually have, and it re-arranges and discombobulates any future you had in mind, because every day is mysterious. You are tasked to engender kindness and compassion in your humans. You are to teach them to stabilize their emotions when your own are completely out of whack since you haven’t slept in eight years. “You can always be kind,” I can say as much as I want to them, but then you have to deconstruct what kindness is.

We haven’t started potty training the maniac, but we’re already getting questions from the second grader about puberty.

And these are the little, little kid years. These are the physical years. These are the years when we’re all learning how to sleep. All of us.

I know adolescence is its own animal, and I’ll know it when it bites me like one.

But no one ever talks about parenting adults. No one ever talks about what it’s like to have spent the years forming and developing and enjoying and not enjoying your child when they turn into their own person, after they’ve absorbed from you what you’ve tried hard to give to and keep from them.

That’s the bravest, hardest part, I think. To feel them when they’re not there, because they used to be there, and now they’re not.

There is so much heartbreak and devastation. There is enormous love and so much else.

There is simply too much to even consider. There is too much.

Now, off we go to get my kindergartner and my second grader their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. My maniac will wait, with me, in my lap, for as long as I can keep him there.

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Short Story Club Selections for November 2021

A few of us last night got online together and talked some about the stories “The Tenth of December,” by George Saunders; “Heads of the Colored People: Four Fancy Sketches, Two Chalk Outlines, And No Apology,” by Nafissa Thompson-Spires; and “The Lady with the Toy Dog,” by Anton Chekhov.

In November, we’re reading:

“The Monkey’s Paw,” by W. W. Jacobs (1902)

and

“The Dog of the Marriage,” in the collection by the same name by Amy Hempel (2005)

and

“Soul Case,” in the collection “Falling in Love with Hominids,” by Nola Hopkinson (2015).

We will gather online in November 2021 to discuss. Let me know if you’d like to join by commenting on this post or finding me on Twitter @erinhadelunde .

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Unintentional Bookshelf Decolonization

I was in middle school, maybe, when my mom and I helped re-seed a trail over a small number of indigenous burial mounds that had been worn down by hikers in our nearby state park. I remember distinctly that we and a dozen or so other volunteers formed something of an assembly line that snaked around the burial mounds. We moved dirt and grass seed and water down the line. We dug out an appropriate path that lead around the mounds. The whole process took maybe an hour.

I remember very vaguely there was someone from a local tribe who blessed the new grass seed. I was intrigued by the process. Probably the hikers who trod the trails over the mounds were ignorant about what was underfoot. Likely, no one had any clue.

I went to a pow wow once when I was in high school. I was entranced by the dancing, of course, and the importance of detail. But even though I was curious, I never did learn much about the indigenous people. I didn’t even know our local tribes.

I have heard the phrase “decolonize your bookshelf” quite a lot over these past few years, but I didn’t realize that I was in the process of doing it, somewhat unintentionally. I have not read — as in read in print — any books lately by indigenous authors (though I did read the novel “There There” by Tommy Orange semi-recently), but I have been listening to a number of podcasts by and about indigenous peoples for a while.

I have to share this tweet about the whole listening-to-is-not-reading debate bullshit:

Randi Jo
@RandiJoDalton
As a Mohawk librarian, when I defend audiobooks, it’s personal. My people were telling stories orally long before stories came packaged in book form. There are many ways to “read” something. There are a thousand ways to tell a story.

Find the whole thread here.

In honor of Indigenous People’s Day, check out these podcasts:

I have a lot to learn and re-learn.
Stay curious. I’m trying.

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But It’s Iowa

We kept the kids home. We un-enrolled from our lives. We ordered little kid masks. We took them out of swimming lessons. We didn’t go to parks for a time. We put up a playset in our yard. And then a pool. And then two other pools, after the first and second ones broke. We didn’t go to Thanksgiving or Christmas last year. We turned a room or two into a “school room.” I facilitated distance learning for my then-first grader while trying to get my then-too-little-for-traditional-school online school options via Outschool.com. I did this while the baby transformed from an infant to a toddler to a climber.

We wore special masks. We turned down social invitations. We tried to enroll the kids in special vaccine trials. We got vaccinated as soon as possible. We kept our kids up-to-schedule with their other vaccinations.

We kept our oldest home from school, even after the district opened up in February of this year to going back to in-person. Finally, at the end of March, we did send him back.

We didn’t do traditional camps over the summer. We did do a lot of outdoor stuff, like mountain biking, and in my case, running.

We haven’t been to an indoor restaurant for a long ass time. Years? But really, who wants to dine indoors (or anywhere, ever) with kids. We don’t go to movies. We don’t go to the fucking Frozen musical that would be so cool for my six-year-old daughter to see.

All of the adults and old-enough kids with whom we socialize are vaccinated. Some are even antsy to get a booster.

My husband took our older two kids to a Cub Scouts camping trip (outdoors, clearly). I took my toddler to Iowa to see my family. Who is grieving. Who is sad. Who has lost so much.

In Iowa, my toddler caught COVID-19. My toddler. Who doesn’t go to daycare. Who doesn’t go to ECFE. Who doesn’t go to Sunday School or playdates. Who follows me around, day and night. He caught it from family who have, now confirmed, breakthrough cases.

And now I have the virus. As does my husband. My big kids, so far, do not.

But they’re out of school for the next two weeks and, woe is me, I will be facilitating some lackadaisical version of distance learning for a second grader and a kindergartner while keeping my mask on and my toddler upstairs. Maybe I will employ Alexa somehow.

We have mild symptoms. Other than anger. My anger (and self-pity) is pretty severe.

Plus, it’s my birthday on Friday. And I had special plans.

In Iowa.

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In Grief: Day 40

Today, I’m in the bright sunshine of my favorite season in my favorite month. I’m digging out some inspiration like it’s the crust around the lid of the yogurt container that needs to come out or damn it my kids will disown me for having to resort to another kind of breakfast; I’m trying, man. I’ve come up with two story ideas and a challenge for myself. I’m re-connecting with my Creativity Matters group and my Short Story Club.

And then I have the thought: I’d like to get a tattoo of my family tree on my left collarbone (which, yes, is over my heart. But that’s not even what I was thinking, originally. I wanted words across the bone.). When I finished that thought, I burst into tears. I wouldn’t say my mood darkened. I’m just feeling somewhat fragile, I guess.

This weekend, my toddler and I went down to my parents’ and saw my sister. We cried a few times. We laughed, too. But then we cried some more. And then my mom and I saw a YouTube video that some friends of my nephew’s created in honor of him. And then we wept and wept, even though my dad said it was a happy thing.

Yes, it was so happy. My nephew had so many friends. They loveloveloved him.

Now I’m crying in the car while my toddler sleeps (we are parked).

I have a new sensation in my chest and throat. It arrived on Saturday. I feel like I swallowed several jumbo cotton balls and that they’re wedged at the base of my throat. I have some trouble breathing deeply.

This is how the 40th day feels to me.

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Death in My Family

On August 25, my nephew was killed in a traffic accident.

He was 24 years old. He had just started his second year teaching middle school in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was writing a book about teaching. He was organizing a coat drive to support underprivileged youth in his school.

He was happy and social and loving and kind.

He was my sister’s first child. He was the first grandchild. He was the first nephew.

From his memorial website:

Jonah Hade Glenn Memorial Site

Remembering Jonah
This site was created in memory of Jonah Hade Glenn.
Adventurer, teacher, son, brother, uncle, and friend.

Ames, Iowa
JONAH HADE GLENN
Jonah Hade Glenn, 24, passed away unexpectedly from injuries sustained in a traffic accident, August 25, 2021, in Salt Lake City Utah.

Jonah was born February 6, 1997, in Ames, IA to Dave Glenn (Lisa), and Maggie Hade White (Noah). He graduated from Ames High in 2015, and in 2020 from Iowa State University with a degree in secondary history and social sciences education. He began his teaching career in the fall of 2020 as a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Midvale Middle School in Midvale, Utah. Although he had just begun his second school year at Midvale, he had already formed many deep relationships with both students and staff in the Midvale family. Throughout Jonah’s time in Ames, he worked various jobs to support his college education and next adventure, eventually finding a social network and second home at The Cafe, in Ames. In Salt Lake, he carried his love of live music, history, and great conversation to a second job where he moonlighted at The Hog Wallow Pub.

After spending the majority of his life in Ames and embarking on many adventures exploring both overseas and the U.S, Jonah truly found a home in Salt Lake City. He loved the adventures the landscape afforded there, and was happiest outdoors. He found the area a perfect playground for his many loves: exploring, skiing, mountain biking, hiking, climbing, camping and riding his motorcycle. He and his dog, Thorin, often explored together and they made friends wherever they went.

Jonah’s curiosity, passion for adventure, joy, and zest for life, and love of connecting with people were obvious. Everyone was a friend; he could find a near-instant connection with strangers. He genuinely cared for all who crossed his path and had a way of making people feel like they were the most important person he knew when around him, because to Jonah, at that moment, they were.

Jonah is survived by his father and stepmother Dave and Lisa Glenn, his mother and stepfather Maggie and Noah White, his sister Ella Glenn, brothers Leo and Keegan White, Theo Glenn and Stephen (Valerie) Paulos, a niece and nephew, Colt and Benelli Paulos, his grandparents George and Sandy Glenn, Jane and Roger Hade, Dave and Nancy White, and a number of aunts, uncles, and cousins. He was preceded in death by his grandparents John and Marge Hepker.

Friends and family can call on Jonah’s family at Bethesda Lutheran Church (1517 Northwestern, Ames), Friday, September 3, from 1 to 3 pm with a short service at 3 pm. We will gather his favorite people, share memories, music, raise a glass, and celebrate Jonah in a space and time a bit more casual and fitting of what we think he’d like his send off to be at the CPMI Events Center (2321 North Loop Drive, Ames) Friday, September 3 from 4 to 7 pm. As Jonah would want: all are welcome and we hope you come to gather as you are.

Our family is overwhelmed, full of gratitude, and thankful for the kindness from the Midvale/Salt Lake and Ames communities, and everywhere else Jonah met friends. The generosity, prayers, and messages are overwhelming and we feel wrapped up and supported by your love. We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you for the many contributions to Jonah’s memorial fund.

I wrote a couple poems in a dumb attempt to grasp some of the feelings I was having:

Event Condition

The Clutching Rocks

He was lovely. He was affecting and impactful. He was a sweet guy. He is profoundly missed.

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Another Story Out in September

Last week I got word that another short story of mine will be published in September. This is such great news. This particular story is about the invisibility of motherhood. There is bloodshed. 🙂 Yay!

I am reading a lot and writing a lot lately. I’m obsessed with the story “Tenth of December,” by George Saunders. Dang. So great.

We’re reading that and “Heads of the Colored People: Four Fancy Sketches, Two Chalk Outlines, And No Apology,” by Nafissa Thompson-Spires as well as “The Lady with the Toy Dog,” by Anton Chekhov for the Short Story Club this month.

We’re always happy to have more members.

Happy summer to you.

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Patreon Launch

I launched a Patreon campaign.
Is that you call it?
Well, that’s what I call it.

Find it and all its offerings at patreon.com/erinlunde

I’m challenging myself to write one 30-word story for each day this month. Day 1 is complete.

I’m also looking forward to reading three short stories for the Short Story Club this month:

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
“White Rat,” by Gayle Jones (1977)
“Staying Behind,” by Ken Liu (2020)

Here’s to summer. School’s out for us on June 11. And then what? Lots of finding things for three kids to do all … damn … day …

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New Story Out

I have another story out called The Lifeguard in Openwork Mag. I feel good about it. 🙂

I have yet another story entered into a couple contests that won’t announce for a few weeks. I love the story because I think it’s hilarious (you won’t), but I really have no idea what to think about how it will fare in a contest.

If I get a story ready by July 24 (I don’t know if I will) I’m going to submit to this really cool workshop/contest/thingy/journal at Sixfold. It’s a writer-voted contest and it’s similar (I think) to a bracket. You submit your story or poetry and then there are rounds of reading and reviewing. You get six or so manuscripts to review and vote on, and in the end, the winners get a whole lot of feedback and some money.

That’s all I have right now.